Anon wants to start a journal

Anon buys a journal; uses 4chan instead.
- Yeah, he's journaling on 4chan, wtf is he doing

want to eat cookies
buy pack of cookies
open pack of cookies
there's just cookies inside
what am I supposed to do? bite on them? that's something that little kids do
- Bro you bake cookies yourself!

Catalogue your nut. How long it took to nut, the amount, the consistency, etc.
- Dude
  
  What? This way instead of telling people you're going to jack off in your room, you can say you're conducting experiments in your lab.
- Missed opportunity to vlog this instead. I’d subscribe, share and comment. I’d ring the bell to get notifications. I’d join the nut squad.

Journaling is a great way to monitor and think on the results of your actions and improve over time. I've seen that, I've done it, I know it works. Yet I still can't bring myself to suffer through the act of writing down my thoughts. I don't like to belabor what is already done, I'd rather call good enough good enough and move to the next problem.
That said, I do establish systems to record efforts and results, they just aren't handwritten. Tables can be quickly searched and summarized.
- Interesting!
  Could you elaborate on your record keeping efforts or share resources you've built off of?

Anon's a fucking moron, apparently 😂

Imagine applying gender to the act of writing words.
- good sirs, is thou engaging in buggery if thou makes record of thine notions?

I tried keeping a journal once
Then my parents found it, read it, and put me in therapy for a while
I no longer keep journals
- Locked folders on your phone work well in my experience. Sucks they forced you to do smth you didn't want to do or weren't ready for, I'm sorry
- It sucks they violated your privacy, but there's nothing wrong with therapy. Did it for a couple years myself. Good to get it out and get someone else's perspective on things.
  Of course, I did that on my own volition. It would've been better if you had that choice too.
- That sucks. Parents don't understand what privacy means when it comes to their children. My diary/journal got exposed by my mother in front of the entire family. That memory just got into my mind by reading your comment. Time to forget it again. 2024 resolution is to try keep things written down again.
- Try Vigenère cipher !
- Was the therapy helpful?

I use mine to freewrite. Just mental dump everything and anything that comes into my mind for three pages. It's cathartic and often comes up with nuggets of useful information I didn't know I was burying.
- Can you give an example by just doing a journal entry here so I can get a feel for it.
  
  Oh hell no! Because it's stream of conscious it's very, very personal 😂
  But whatcha gotta do is set a fixed goal (time or pages - I recommend pages) and then write down everything that comes to mind without judgement or fear. Sometimes, when I'm having a dark day, the first page is just me complaining and moaning. But for three pages? It's hard for the brain to get stuck in that rut for so long so it starts exploring solutions, options, or simply other things.
  Give it a go! Don't stop writing for three pages, don't worry about quality, reader, or anything! Just write whatever comes into your brain. Like meditation it takes practice but is well worth the results (imo).
  
  Here's an article for writers that I found helpful for my journaling. I don't do it creatively, I just write what comes to my mind about life and the day ahead and the day finished.

My friend had a hard time journaling until I told him to format it like greentext. I meant what are greentexts but stylized journal entries? Just write greentexts about your day. Your emotional state. Shit that pissed you off. Notable things that made you happy.
You can look back in 6 months and see what your life was like compared to now.
- "Damn, can't believe I used to go on 4chan."

Dear diary,
Today OP questioned if he was a faggot for wanting to write in a diary.

Alas, an actual paper journal is dead to me.
Too insecure, too accessible. If it ain't encrypted, nothing personal would ever go in it.
- Encrypt your words at the time of writing if you're smart enough.
  
  pull a tolkien and make your own lexicon and language
  
  Instructions unclear nepis tucks in botenook
  
  Go full Anne Lister with it
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigen%C3%A8re_cipher
- Create your own cypher.
  I seriously doubt you have any sort of critical information on your hands but...
  Cyphered journals have been a things for centuries. If nothing else, it's a hobbie you can develop.
  
  I used to, but they're pretty easy to crack if they're easy enough to be kept in your head (well, my head lol).
  And ya never know when laws might change, or some bitter ex decides to steal shit, or whatever. Critical in terms of dangerous in general, obviously not, but sensitive, yes.
- That's why you don't write down your plans to shoot the president, you write what you had for dinner and what happened at work
  
  If you write this sort of thing down you're a cartoon supervillain
- If it's so damning that you're that worried about it you might need a psychiatrist and not a journal.
  
  Considering the way the US has been lately, nobody should be keeping any kind of personal information available where state or federal governments can access it. People have been fucking arrested for having a miscarriage. They've been arrested for having an abortion based on Facebook information.
  All it takes is the wrong law being passed, and we can all be fucked.
  Also, there's absolutely no reason for you to be an asshole about it. If you can't partake in a conversation without that kind of behavior, it may be that you really would benefit from some therapy.

Hey I posted this before
upvotes anyway

Tbf, I'm not sure what I would want to put in a journal either.
Had a wank, ate breakfast, played Horizon Forbidden West, watched LOTR, had tea, went to bed.
- I mean that's a great day, you should write that down for posterity!
- Do that, but write down how long you game. My grandpa did that with smoking.
  Saved every penny he would have used for smokes. Financed a car for the money after some years
- That, but add how you felt/feel about those things. Or what they made you think of. Etc.

Sometimes I sketch and write down ideas for patents that somebody definitely already thought of between 10 and 80 years ago.

I find they are good for keeping track of media I consume whether it's movies, TV shows, or video games

Bullet journal. Leave a few pages blank at the start for an ongoing index. Then use it for writing whatever you feel like and adjust the index as you go.
It'll end up being a mishmash of grocery lists, shower thoughts, reminders, sketches, goals, bad poetry, and evidence for tax fraud, and you'll still be able to find what you need when you need it.
- Plus, in 300 years, your journal will be used in an anthropology class to educate future generations on the modern way of life!

In all seriousness, yes.
For me, my most valuable journaling has been stream-of-conscious thoughts as they come in. Good. Bad. Whatever. It all gets written down. This ain’t archival biography writing. In fact, it’s super liberating to throw out old journals sometimes. They’re all just thoughts.
Journaling has been the single most valuable tool in my mental health journey. It’s baffling how bad a day can be when I haven’t had my morning brain dump.

Start a dream journal. Write down your dreams the second you wake up. It's a big step to lucid dreaming.

Man, you write one day in detail and then just write "see page one" on the other pages unless something interesting happened.

You just fucking write anything. Literally anything. Over time you'll develop a style that works. Just start with something.

Imagine just leaving your thoughts around where anyone could find them and have you committed.